HIV: Gov. Pass A New Bill To Lower Down Sentence For HIV Positive People To Have Sex Without Telling Their Partners
Friday, in California, the case for knowingly exposing HIV without revealing the infection to sexual partner has been lower down. From felony, it was lower to a misdemeanor. The bill was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown. The new bill also applies to people who donate blood without letting the blood bank know that they are positive.
Currently, the modern medicine allows people who are infected with HIV to live longer lives. It nearly estimates the possibility of transmission. According to Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblyman Todd Gloria (D-San Diego), authors of the bill who is the state Senator and also the author of the bill. As follows, the new bill will start on January 1, 2018, according to CNN.
Sen. Scott Wiener said in a statement that "Today California took a major step toward treating HIV as a public health issue, instead of treating people living with HIV as criminals. HIV should be treated like all other serious infectious diseases. That's what SB 239 does," according to LA Times.
The people who support the change shared that the current law requires intent to transmit HIV to justify a felony. However, other cases that have been noted and already prosecuted where there was no physical contact. So, there was no argument lacking.
In the California law, HIV has been the only communicable disease of which exposure is a felony. In the current law, however, Wiener argued that it may convince people not to be tested for HIV. He added that without the test they cannot be charged with a felony if they expose a partner to the infection. He also mentioned that "We are going to end new HIV infections, and we will do so not by threatening people with state prison time, but rather by getting people to test and providing them access to care."
Meanwhile, the Republican lawmakers including Sen. Joel Anderson of Alpine voted against the bill. He argued it puts the public at risk. He said during the debate that "I'm of the mind that if you purposefully inflict another with a disease that alters their lifestyle the rest of their life, puts them on a regimen of medications to maintain any kind of normalcy, it should be a felony. It's absolutely crazy to me that we should go light on this."
